When reporting on science, reporters and editors like sexy stories. Since most science isn't particularly sexy, there's usually a hook. If you can squeeze "risk" and "cancer" into a headline, an editor sees good headline. What I usually see is a sensationalist article that is going to get it very wrong.
One of the questions most often asked in the medical literature is "what is the risk of x?" It's a pretty important question. I'd like to be able to tell my patient with high blood pressure what their risk of heart attack is, both with and without treatment. And risk is a sexy topic---the press loves it. Whether it's cell phones and the "risk" of brain cancer, or vaccines and the "risk" of autism, risk makes for cool headlines. Take this one for example:
Migraines cut breast cancer risk 30 percent: study
What does this mean? Should I tell my wife to go out and find some migraines? What the hell is risk, anyway?
Risk, in the most basic sense, is a causal association. If, for example, I find that members of the "Thunderstorm-lovers Golf Association" have a higher incidence of being struck by lightning than golfers who don't belong to this odd club, I may have stumbled upon a measurable risk. There is both a measurable association, and a plausible reason to causally link the associated variables. If I find that members of the National Association of Philatelists have a higher incidence of heart disease than other folks, I may or may not have stumbled on a risk. Is there a reason that philatelists should have more heart disease? Is it a coincidence? Is it worth investigating further? Is there a confounding variable, e.g. are philatelists in general older, and did I fail to control for this?
Then there is the question of the degree of risk. How strong is the risk observed?
Statisticians have ways of measuring risk, but many of these terms---such as relative risk, absolute risk reduction, odds ratio---are not intuitive concepts.
Let's take the study in question. The premise is interesting. Migraines and breast cancer are both associated with estrogen. Many breast cancers are estrogen-dependent, and the risk of developing breast cancer correlates with exposure to estrogen.
Migraines appear to be associated with estrogen as well, but negatively. This is a much more tenuous connection. It has been observed that migraines tend to wax during estrogen-poor times, and wane during estrogen-rich times---high estrogen, fewer migraines; low estrogen, more migraines. Or so it's been observed.
The authors of this study invoked migraine as a negative risk factor for breast cancer. The English meaning of "risk" is a bit lost here---what they are saying is that women who have migraines are less likely to develop breast cancer than women who don't have migraines. This shouldn't be all that surprising, as migraines and breast cancer are both associated with, well, womanhood.
But all this aside, it's the "30%" headline annoys me. That a big number! Get me a migraine, stat! But thirty percent is an "odds ratio", which is a mathematical way of describing an association in a case-control study such as this one. Odds ratios are not intuitive, and as a measure of risk, they tend to break down when looking at common occurrences, such as migraines.
If we look directly at the data from the study, the data used to calculate the odds ratio, we see something else. In this study, the control group was post-menopausal women without breast cancer. The case group was women with breast cancer. Among women without breast cancer, 19% had ever had a migraine. Among women with breast cancers, 14-15% had ever had a migraine. So, there was about a 4-5% difference in migraine rates between women with and without breast cancer. Does that still sound like a big number?
Statistics are non-intuitive. I have to work pretty hard to try to dig out the clinical meaning from stats, and I still get it wrong sometimes. The press gets it wrong much more often. Be very wary of banner headlines about risk. Besides the difficulty of understanding the difference between risk reduction and odds ratios, what does it mean in the real world?
To be perfectly frank, I think the authors have studied a question that no one is asking. We already know that estrogen is positively associated with breast cancer, and we suspect that estrogen reduces migraine frequency (maybe). What is the point of looking at the relationship between two secondary outcomes? In other words, if a and b are both dependent on c, does it even mean anything to say that a and b vary inversely? I don't think so. Do you?
References
R. W. Mathes, K. E. Malone, J. R. Daling, S. Davis, S. M. Lucas, P. L. Porter, C. I. Li (2008). Migraine in Postmenopausal Women and the Risk of Invasive Breast Cancer Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention, 17 (11), 3116-3122 DOI: 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-08-0527
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I second the notion that this is an odd study. I'm not really familiar with stats and the medical literature, but I'm pretty sure I've heard of both of the following: A) Physicians recommending early/frequent pregnancy as temporary and possibly long term relief for migraines, and B) Women claiming their migraines got better (less frequent/less intense) while they were pregnant and/or breastfeeding. Since there is a known correlation between childbirth and breast cancer, it seems possible that this is what they were measuring. Did they take a childbirth history from both groups?
So what does all this suggest about migraines and menopause?
I suck-- I totally forgot to link to my "six random things" meme answers for which you tagged me! I did them here, back in October, gah!
Also, if I were an oncologist, "GET ME A MIGRAINE, STAT!" would totally be my new catch-phrase! :D
While statistics can be abused and hard to understand, their complexity is why they give me migraines and prevent me from getting breast cancer.
Give me some "GET ME SOME STATS, STAT!"
Not sure how migraineurs should feel about this one.
Betsy
Migraine Expressions: A Creative Journey through Life with Migraine
www.MigraineExpressions.com
Betsy, personally, I'm going with "happy to still have the option of beta blockers."
I don't really understand the complaint here. Going from a 19% risk to a 14% risk seems like a straightforward 26% risk reduction to me. Giving the percentage point reduction would be weird and confusing. (I'm not sure where the 30% number came from, though.)
"risk reduction" is not such a clear concept. What the 30% represents is an odds ratio.
It' not that 30% is incorrect, it's that it is misrepresented (unintentionally im sure)
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